House of Commons Hansard Debates for 2 Dec 1991

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Brand stretching has been mentioned. Cigarette advertisements are displayed around football grounds. On the one hand, Ministers want health education councils to make life for young people more pleasant and varied, but on the other they are encouraging young people to smoke, thereby negating all the assistance given to health education councils. That is massive hypocrisy, and the sooner it is eliminated the better.

As long ago as 1979, a British American Tobacco memorandum stated :

"Opportunities should be explored by all companies so as to find non- tobacco products and other services which can be used to communicate the brand or house name, together with their essential visual identifiers."

Strathclyde university's research showed that that strategy works well with children. An example was given of an advertisement for John Player Special grand prix holidays which did not mention cigarettes or carry a Government health warning, but 91 per cent. of 12 to 16-year-olds said that it advertised cigarettes. What a triumph for the advertisers. They got their message across easily, and the Government by their inactivity are condoning that strategy. If the Under-Secretary of State does not have anything positive to say to us tonight, he should be ashamed of himself. He should think of the young people who are dying, and of those who will die in the future. He should also think about the national health service. If it is supposed to be safe in the Government's hands, it should be made safer for the people who use it. That is the message to get across. We want action from the Government, not total inactivity. The facts have been spelt out. The nation's health is at stake. The Under-Secretary of State should do something for a change. 9.14 pm

Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) : I fully endorse the plea by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) for the Under- Secretary to do something. I suspect that my hon. Friend will be disappointed, because short shrift was made of the last Minister who tried to do something about this matter--the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) ; he was sent--

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell) : My hon. Friend was promoted to housing

Mr. Wilson : The Minister said that the hon. Gentleman was promoted to housing, but it was by a somewhat circuitous route. He was sent sliding down the greasy pole, was a poll tax rebel for a while and was then brought back to housing. He has certainly not uttered another word about smoking and health. I suspect that any Minister who has been in such a position will have learnt the lesson that to speak out as a matter of principle about the tobacco industry and its influence is not likely to lead to promotion within the Conservative party.

Mr. McFall : The hon. Gentleman was very honourable in his actions but when the tobacco industry got word of what he was doing they had a word with Downing street. According to one policial pundit, the Prime Minister at the time--the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher)--asked, "What is he--is he clever or not so clever?" Someone said, "He is clever," so she said, "Well, he's got to get the bag."

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Mr. Wilson : The one episode of "Yes, Minister" that rang true was that in which the wheezing advocate of the tobacco industry ended up as Minister for Sport in the Conservative Government.

However, the subject should not be treated with levity. It has interested me for a long time, both politically and personally. My father was a heavy smoker and a non-drinker who died after a massive heart attack at the age of 59. I am sure that he was one of the triumphs of the tobacco industry's activities in the past few decades.

There is something peculiarly obnoxious about an industry that knows that in order to guarantee its continued profits far into the next century it now has to hook young people--the most vulnerable in our communities--on a habit which is unanimously agreed to be addictive. People who have not yet reached the age of reason, who are not responsible and who have their whole lives ahead of them are caught at an early age by the industry in the cynical knowledge that once they are caught as kids, the industry will probably have them for the rest of their lives.

The fact that those lives are truncated--often markedly--and blighted by the cost of the exercise is as nothing to the tobacco industry or its handmaiden, the advertising industry, which promotes its wares. Those facts are irrelevant to the industry as long as it can keep churning out the profits for its shareholders--that is the extent of its interest. It is in every sense of the word a dirty business and it is a pretty grubby Government who defend the industry's activities and who live as closely with it as the present Government do. I have been interested in the issue for some time and I am grateful to my hon. Friends who quoted what I have written about it recently. I was struck by the absurdity and degradation of the fact that above all else in the European debate the Government are desperate for flags to raise as witnesses to their success in defending British interests against the wiles of Johnny foreigner in Europe. However, the best they can come up with is that they are "leading the Opposition" to an EC-inspired attempt to ban tobacco advertising. What a proud activity for our Government to be engaged in. We are supposed to be proud that they can carry on flogging their wares and promoting cancer and the sale of cigarettes to youngsters. That is possible on every front with the massive budgets to which my hon. Friends referred because in order to display their proud anti-Europeanism, the Government have successfully opposed a ban on advertising in the European Community.

It was timely that, as the debate was getting under way, we had news from Canada through The Observer --as my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) said--that some documents have emerged. I do not believe that they differ from the existing documents in every tobacco multi-national in the world. They reveal that the strategies make it perfectly clear that all the verbosity and apologia for what advertising is supposed to do is so much padding. The fact is that the whole marketing strategy is to aim at children from the age of 12 upwards, especially girls of that age. In the industry's own terms, it is a great triumph. Every piece of research shows that the strongest client market for new smokers is that category, especially young women from the lower social and economic background. Millions of vulnerable, poor people are targeted. For the industry to be sustained, it has to get them into the

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addictive habit between the ages of 12 and 18. How can any Government, even of the calibre and stamp of this one, defend that as a legitimate commercial activity? How can they refuse to take the modest step that my hon. Friends have proposed? To their honour, some Conservative Members support that step, and they would have been here if they had known that there would be an elongated debate. The issue crosses the House, because it is a question of basic morality. How can anyone accept that an industry should be allowed to go on flogging its wares in that way?

This may be a convenient point at which to get the libertarian argument out of the road. If people make a decision to smoke of their free will, that is their business. If they are in possession of the facts and decide to smoke, it is a decision freely made. I may quibble with their right to smoke in places where there are non-smokers, and there is a whole debate about secondary smoking, but, if they make the decision when of mature age and with the information available from many sources, I cannot quibble with it. However, I quibble deeply with the idea that smokers should be deprived of that free will and that the argument should be so weighted towards those who have a vested interest in abrogating free will by pushing their wares through the most subtle techniques of advertising, marketing and sponsorship specifically directed at the people in society who are known to be the most vulnerable. Other hon. Members referred to the report "From the Billboard to the Playground", commissioned by the Cancer Research Campaign, which is an extension of the Cancer Research Organisation. It is a timely report, because it considers precisely the issue of the impact of tobacco advertising on youngsters. It considered first the familiar self- justification which everyone in the House and in the country knows is rubbish. The industry says that all it is trying to do is to switch customers between competing brands. Nobody believes that, and I hope that it will not form part of the Minister's defence tonight. If tobacco companies were only promoting brand switching, the industry would have an ever-diminishing number of smokers among whom to share out the various brands. The Minister says that there are a diminishing number of smokers. That is true in spite of the best efforts of the tobacco and advertising industries, but it is not a sharply diminishing number. To prevent it from becoming a sharply diminishing number, the industry has to have new recruits. Everybody knows that advertising is targeted primarily at achieving those recruits.

Mr. Morgan : The Minister will probably claim that the decline in the number of smokers is greater in this country than it is in Italy and in France. However, the decline is smaller than the decline in the United States, where smoking among the middle class and among college students is virtually unknown. It would be great if we could achieve that level of non- smoking among school and college students. The banning of tobacco advertising would be a great contribution to achieving what the United States has already achieved.

Mr. Wilson : Everyone recognises that the banning of tobacco advertising does not achieve all those ends on its own--that it has to be part of wider strategy. It is obviously highly desirable that middle-class youngsters and students drop out of smoking--even in this country,

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they do so in relatively high numbers--but that concentrates with an even stronger focus the efforts of the tobacco and advertising industries on youngsters who do not come from such categories. A huge gulf exists. I do not have the statistics to hand, but they show how the number of smokers differs between socio-economic groups. In a group of 20 or 30 youngsters from the background described by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) it would be considered odd for someone to be puffing away and spreading filth in the direction of others in that group. However, in a group of 20 or 30 youngsters from the least successful socio-economic background, who have the least going for them and the smallest incomes, the chances are that there will be a greater number of smokers. The corollary of that is that a higher proportion of their income is spent on tobacco products.

The attitude that smoking is anti-social is gaining currency among the more articulate, better educated and more aware groups in society, but the vicious corollary is that the tobacco and advertising industries must get their recruits from the lower end of the socio-economic scale.

I attended two meetings in my constituency yesterday. The first comprised people with advanced educational qualifications. To some extent, it was a self-selecting group. There were no smokers in the room. However, there was a much wider range of society at my second meeting. There were more people from lower socio-economic groups. I emerged from that meeting, like everyone else, covered in the smell and stains of tobacco smoke because 60 or 70 per cent. of the people had been smoking at the meeting.

It would be desirable if we could reduce the number of smokers to the level found in the higher socio-economic groups. As an interim step, we must try to wean from smoking the people in society who are most vulnerable to the habit.

The Strathclyde university report stated :

"The idea of a mature tobacco market"--

that means a market which cannot expand any further

"cannot be supported the key group for the tobacco industry is young smokers. They have to be recruited and retained for the industry to flourish. In no sense can this market be said to be mature."

The report examined research from the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, and concluded that cigarette advertising is getting through to children and encouraging them to smoke and to carry on smoking. That will doubtless be satisfactory news in Canada, and probably in the United Kingdom, where we know, from incontrovertible evidence, that that is the precise name of the tobacco industry's game.

I want to refer to the relationship between tobacco and sport, and particularly the role of sponsorship. Recently, I was astounded to receive a document in my post entitled "British International Sports Relay." It is difficult to establish who published that document. Where one would normally expect to find those details, there is the logo of the Sports Council, and the statement :

"Additional copies of Relay available from Sports Council International Affairs Unit."

Under the heading "Tobacco Sponsorship" is a debate in which David Pollock, the director of Action for Smoking and Health, argues against tobacco sponsorship in sport under the accurate heading, "A cancerous growth on sport". However, to my bewilderment, I found that the argument in favour of tobacco sponsorship was not put by

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some fruitcake from the tobacco industry's front organisations, but by the general secretary of the Central Council of Physical Recreation, Mr. Peter Lawson.

If the Minister for Sport was on the Treasury Bench, I would ask him-- instead, I ask all hon. Members and the country--what is going on when the general secretary of the Central Council of Physical Recreation puts his name and that of his organisation to a positive argument in favour of tobacco sponsorship in sport?

His words read like an ultra-right libertarian tract rather than the reasoned utterances of a representative of a body that has been entrusted by the Government with the responsibility for sport and physical recreation. He begins :

"Sport in Britain is strapped for cash."

We all know that. The article continues :

"Sports bodies are denied resources by government, which takes more from sport than it ever gives back. The gap between government parsimony and the needs of sport is filled by commercial sponsorship. Without it, sport would wither."

That may be a wee indictment of the Government, but so far the argument is reasonably incontestable. However, Mr. Lawson then continues by making no distinction whatsoever between tobacco sponsorship and any other form of sponsorship.

I very much regret that it is impossible to have a sports event, club or team these days without having a commercial sponsor. We could have an interesting separate debate about the role of sponsorship, but we accept that, if any sport in this country is to get off the ground, such sponsorship is a mandatory part of the scene. Surely, however, there are lines to be drawn, and it is not only remarkable, but worrying, to find that someone in such a responsible position can argue that the tobacco industry provides a neutral form of sponsorship.

Mr. Lawson continued :

"The tobacco industry is frequently and unfortunately vilified for its association with sport. Such criticism is, in my view, totally misguided. The governing bodies of sport are not naive, nor are they irresponsible. Sponsorship decisions that they face and must take because of their impecunity are based on a careful assessment of their impact upon their participants and their supporters. Sponsorship of sport by the tobacco industry is controlled by voluntary agreement and is carefully monitored to ensure that young people are not recipients of a pro-smoking message."

With respect, that is so much tosh. Mr. Lawson knows it, the tobacco industry knows it and the Government know it. Indeed, I would be deeply concerned to think that the people who preside over the Central Council of Physical Recreation do not know it. It is extraordinary that an employee of that body is allowed to write publicly in such terms. It is even more odd that the Sports Council should publish his words.

We know that the controls over tobacco sponsorship of sport do not have the affect that Mr. Lawson attributes to them, because all the academic research shows that the tobacco industry's sponsorship of sport is aimed at a younger market. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall) has said, the sponsorship is aimed at a market that identifies sport with glamour and, by extension, with tobacco. That is not only the market at which the advertising is aimed--it is the market that it hits. It is appalling for the general secretary of the Central Council of Physical Recreation to argue otherwise. However, Mr. Lawson continued :

"The often repeated suggestion that sports bodies are free to select sponsors as and when they wish is nonsense."

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I shall stop quoting Mr. Lawson there because, until that point, he has used the argument of impecunity. The Government must address that argument directly.

I am not interested in scoring cheap points in this debate about the underfunding of sport, but if sport is using underfunding as an excuse or justification for taking large amounts of money from the tobacco industry, the Government must address the question whether they should put more money into sport so that sport does not have to use that excuse.

Mr. Lawson moves on to what I regard as even more dangerous territory. He writes :

"At base, there is a larger issue than that of finance. Fundamentally, it is a question of freedom. Are sportsmen and sportswomen to be at liberty to negotiate in the interests of their sport or are they to be browbeaten by the lobby of latter-day puritans?"

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker) : Order. The hon. Gentleman is going wide of the subject before the House. He should return to the targeting of tobacco advertising on young people.

Mr. Wilson : I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but sponsorship is a form of advertising. Every sponsorship is accompanied by advertising. There is manifold evidence which I could--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. The hon. Gentleman is talking about the financing of sport.

Mr. Wilson : I have left that subject, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As Mr. Lawson writes :

"At base, there is a larger issue than that of finance." So we are off finance altogether. He continues :

"Fundamentally, it is a question of freedom. Are sportsment and sportswomen to be at liberty to negotiate in the interests of their sport or are they to be browbeaten by the lobby of latter-day puritans?"

Mr. Lawson applies that description to people like me, who believe that tobacco advertising and sponsorship of sport are immoral and have precisely the effect that they are intended to have, which is to recruit young people into smoking.

Mr. Morgan : Surely the critical issue is that of role models. Sporting heroes are naturally role models for young people. The deviousness and deceitfulness of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship activities which are directed at children lie in the fact that they tell them that one must be healthy and have lung function of 120 per cent. to do well at sport, while it is practised by people wearing jerseys and caps carrying insignia and logos which bear a message about a product which will reduce one's lung function to 80 per cent., 50 per cent. and eventually zero per cent.

Mr. Wilson : My hon. Friend is right. There is a link between the the words "advertising" and "sponsorship". The tobacco industry plans a long time ahead. It sees the writing on the wall for its advertising. It knows that, whatever the Government say, eventually European law or the law of a more enlightened British Government will say, "You just cannot do it."

Tobacco advertising on television was banned in 1965. The industry has had 26 years grace for other forms of advertising. That will not go on much longer. Now the

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tobacco industry is going for the slightly more subtle form of advertising which is sponsorship. It is aimed at the same target, which is the young and vulnerable people in society whom the industry needs to recruit.

I am aware that other hon. Members wish to speak. The points are obvious and clear. The only question is whether the Government have the will to do anything about them. Let us confront the matter. It is a moral question at root. We talk in many different contexts about the need to protect young people from various vices in society. The fact that something happens to be legal as a matter of tradition going far back into history does not mean that it is not a vice in society.

I suspect that, if someone now discovered a substance as addictive and harmful as tobacco, even this Government would be highly unlikely to license it to get it off the ground as a marketable product. We experienced a similar event in Scotland, when Skol Bandits started to be manufactured in East Kilbride. They were a relatively new product. Eventually, the Government intervened to prevent the manufacture of that product in Britain.

We all inherit a tradition from a different age when tobacco was acceptable. As I said earlier, one cannot switch off the tap and ban tobacco. That is not the proposition, but the fact that one does not ban it does not mean that, with the knowledge that we now possess, we do not regard it as a debilitating and dangerous influence on society, and especially young people. The question is whether we protect those young people from the recognition of the information that we have accumulated in the past two or three decades. That is a moral choice.

I have no wish to attribute motives, but clearly finance intervenes. Every advertisement on behalf of the tobacco industry delivers millions in tobacco tax to the Treasury. If that is the wages of sin, to what extent are the Government prepared to maintain them? If the price of doing that is leading another generation into that habit

Mr. Alun Michael (Cardiff, South and Penarth) : The subject of the debate is the targeting of young people. Surely all hon. Members would argue that it is wrong for the industry to be able to target young people. However, does my hon. Friend agree that the Government have the worst of both worlds? They seem to be allowing the targeting of young people through advertising, but, because of the tax regime that they have introduced in the past few years, they seem to be exporting jobs in the tobacco industry. We seem to have the worst of both worlds. We still seem to have cigarettes, but jobs are going overseas, yet we allow the targeting of young people. Both parts of that equation seem to be crazy.

Mr. Wilson : It is tricky to agree with that argument. I am not that interested in where the jobs that make the product are located, but I have sympathy with tobacco workers. Like everyone else, they were taken into whatever jobs were available for them. If a social and political decision is taken against tobacco products and cigarettes, clearly there is a social and political responsibility to find other forms of employment for those people. In parts of Glasgow, the tobacco industry is very important. One cannot shut up shop and say, "We wipe our hands of those people." There is a responsibility to create other employment, and that would be the view of any responsible Government.

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I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) that it is doubly absurd to destroy jobs in the British tobacco industry--as has been done on a large scale--if that leads not to a reduction in tobacco consumption but to the substitution of imported brands of cigarette.

Mr. Michael : There is a large tobacco factory in my constituency. I have made it clear to the people who work there and to the management that I am against the encouragement of tobacco addiction and in favour of measures which will prevent the use of tobacco in public places. However, when the company was considering the service and repair of machinery and was thinking of sending it abroad to Scandanavia, it was willing to listen and to ensure that the work was carried out in this country.

The Government, through their tax regimes, do not seem to be interested in that. Tobacco consumption will be a fact of life in this country for some time. During that period, we want to do all we can to reduce it, especially among young people, and we want to avoid targeting them in advertising. However, we must do what we can to ensure that that does not have a consequent effect on unemployment in this country through a failure to understand that process.

Mr. Wilson : My hon. Friend argues his own case very well. I do not disagree with a word of it.

I suspect that people who work in the industry are under no illusions. They know the way that the wind is blowing, and would be only too pleased to be redeployed into another trade. The tragedy is that, whatever the direction that market forces blow, when they are left to their own devices, the choice for workers in such industries is not between the status quo and redeployment, but between the status quo and loss of their jobs. In those circumstances, it is natural that those who work in the tobacco industry should be as anxious as anyone to defend their jobs.

I conclude with a plea to the Minister. We are faced with a moral choice : do we allow our youngsters to be exploited? Do we allow people from the age of 12 to be induced into a habit which is addictive and will undermine, and in many cases destroy, their lives? How many smokers who were hooked when 12, 13, or 14, in their formative years, are grateful for having been subjected to the wiles of the tobacco and advertising industries? The vast majority curse the day they became hooked on the habit. That surely places a responsibility on any Government of any political complexion to trample on the bogus libertarian appeal of the tobacco and advertising industries that they are only offering choice. 9.45 pm

Mr. Nigel Griffiths (Edinburgh, South) : I am grateful for the opportunity that we have been afforded by my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) to debate an extremely important subject. We are also indebted to the Minister and the Whips for allowing us adequate time in which to adduce our arguments.

The debate is not about banning the advertising of tobacco. It is about the impact of tobacco advertising and the promotion of tobacco on young people. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr.

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Wilson) pointed out, we in Scotland know that the words of some irresponsible sectors of the tobacco industry during the 1980s turned out to be weasel words.

One thinks of the way in which the industry set up a factory, with considerable Government money, to produce Skoal Bandits, and then blatantly promoted that carcinogenic product, which promotes mouth cancers, to children in nearby schools. That factory turned out to be a short-lived exercise and a gross waste of Government money. It was a symptom or symbol of the 1980s and a lesson for the 1990s of collusion between Government and irresponsible elements who have done much to give the tobacco industry a bad name.

I pay tribute to people who have advised parents and children of the dangers of taking up smoking. Dr. Lynne Michelle, of Edinburgh, has highlighted in her studies on the perception of children of the promotion of cigarettes the grave danger, almost the entrapment of a younger generation by irresponsible elements in the industry and, sadly, the example set by other adults, including parents. Those results were published last year and cited by an all-party group in Westminster Hall. The findings were horrific. I also pay tribute to Alison Hillhouse, of ASH in Scotland, who has done much to highlight the dangers of smoking.

Mr. Michael : While my hon. Friend is paying tribute to several people who have highlighted those issues, will he also pay tribute to a specialist in Wales, with the Celtic name of Dr. Ian Campbell, who has highlighted those issues strongly? In the light of his experience and expertise at Llandough hospital in my constituency, he has alerted people in Wales to the dangers of smoking, the burdens that smoking places on the NHS and the tremendous damage that it does to health. He, too, has sought to publicise and to persuade the public of the need to avoid the activities that are being condemned in this debate.

Mr. Griffiths : I could not pay a more eloquent testimony to the doctor than my hon. Friend has just paid. He, too, will have had a chance to study the fourth report of the Committee for Monitoring Agreements on Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship, several paragraphs of which deal with the targeting of tobacco advertising at young people.

Before I go into the details of the report's findings and the accompanying and interesting, if depressing, press statement by the Minister on 9 September, I should say that there is not only increasing public awareness of the problems of smoking and its long-term consequences to the health of smokers, but an increasing awareness of the dangers of passive smoking, particularly to children. Lothian Region Transport plc has done much to ensure that smoking is banned from public transport in the Lothian area. As in America, smoking is now increasingly prohibited in public places in Britain, which means that children are less influenced by adults who smoke and whose passive smoking does much to damage young children's health.

I look forward to the day when restaurants, pubs, cafe s and public transport undertakings through the United Kingdom take seriously the problems of smoking. If they permit smoking, they should set aside special rooms for those who wish to smoke and for those who do not.

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Mr. Morgan : I hope that my hon. Friend agrees that, if, we are to stop young people inhaling smoke unintentionally and passively in public places such as restaurants and railway carriages, the physical segregation between areas where people are allowed to smoke and those where they are not must be far better.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. None of that relates to the targeting of advertising on young children.

Mr. Morgan : I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was about to come to that.

Mr. Deputy Speaker : I think that I will allow the hon. Gentleman to get on with his speech.

Mr. Griffiths : It was not an unhelpful intervention, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because one of the problems in dealing with the targeting of advertising is that advertisements aimed at adults will be less effective than the Minister may wish if they take account of the fact that children may be present. The problem that my hon. Friend rightly highlights of there being no closing doors on trains between smoking and non-smoking areas exposes children to smoking.

Mr. Morgan : The point that my hon. Friend is about to come to is that the advertising directed at young people creates a climate of social acceptability in which children will then not complain about the awful smell of smoke from the other side of a physical barrier--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. That is nonsense. Mr. Griffiths.

Mr. Griffiths : The fourth report of the Committee on Monitoring Agreements on Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship was produced this summer and the Minister will have had time to study it in detail. One of the most disturbing aspects of the report relates to the financing of the committee. The funding for direct mail research was £24,000, the chairman's fees were £2,000 and there was a miscellaneous sum of £331 for telephone, stationery and the like. That is a total of £26,331. An additional sum for certain members and secretaries' expenses was met by the Department and the companies, but the amount is unspecified. That is a derisory total for a committee monitoring agreements on tobacco advertising and sponsorship. It is less than £30,000, compared with the tens or hundreds of millions that are spent on promoting tobacco. Only four members of the committee represented the Department of Health, but there were seven from the trade, the Tobacco Advisory Council and various tobacco companies. That shows an imbalance. More disturbing is an analysis of the complaints. A fifth of the complaints against companies for advertising in an irresponsible fashion in breach of the code were upheld. That is serious in view of the fact that the committee has been running for more than four years. One would have thought that its very existence would be some sort of deterrent. The fact that one in five of the complaints were held to be breaches of the code shows that the tobacco companies have perhaps been treating the committee and the issue in a cavalier way. The report shows that the committee devoted some time to analysing a helpful report from the Health Education Authority, "Beating the Ban", which was published in 1990. It grieves me to say that the committee

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seemed to spend some time trying to denigrate the authority's findings and to vindicate the tobacco industry. It should have spent a little more time looking at the serious work being carried out by the Health Education Authority and less time on carping criticisms of the authority's work.

Sadly, the preface to the report, the covering letter from Mr. John Belloch, chairman of the Committee for Monitoring Agreements on Tobacco Advertising and Sponsorship, shows that the increase in the number of breaches in the past year has risen by 35 per cent. Perhaps that increase reflects a decline in profits, the recession and the drive by tobacco companies to advertise their products even more fiercely. None the less, the rise is worrying.

The committee was set up under the terms of a voluntary agreement. The Minister and I may disagree about whether the emphasis should be on voluntary or statutory agreements. The agreement was concluded with the Government on 1 April 1986. The committee contains leading representatives of the tobacco industry and its task is to monitor the operation of the agreements on advertising and on sponsorship of sports by tobacco companies in the United Kingdom. My hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North spoke about that.

That is a more recent agreement, dating from January 1987. I shall not read out the main provisions of the agreement, because they fall outwith the terms of the Adjournment debate topic, but they are available to the general public, and to hon. Members in the Library. The problems that are highlighted--here is where we question the faith of some of the marketers of tobacco companies--include the limiting of expenditure on cigarette brand poster advertising to 50 per cent. of the level in the year ended 31 March 1980. The problem arises from the fact that--

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Wood.]

Mr. Griffiths : I was saying that the proportion of advertising expenditure given was for that in the two lowest tar groups, which was rather less than the proportion of total sales.

I do not want to carp about the work of the Committee. I welcome the fact that the industry gets together with the Minister's representative and with representatives of other Departments, and I welcome the agreement to cease advertising in cinemas and to support an advertising campaign about illegal sales to children under 16. These measures have the full endorsement of the Labour party, which also welcomes the fact that notices about the law will be made extensively available for display by the retail trade and will be fixed to automatic vending machines by operators.

I know that the industry and the Department of Health are to consider what further action is needed to publicise the law in the light of the Children and Young Persons (Protection from Tobacco) Act 1991. I refer to the case outlined in the report of breaches of the code and to the cases behind the figures that I have given.

Mr. Michael : My hon. Friend has mentioned the reports of the Committee, including one on the general aspects of two televised sporting events sponsored by tobacco companies. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is

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not the specific element, but the general targeting of young people, which may not be explicit, that causes the most difficulty? All of us who have worked with young people know that, in relation to pop music and sport, the impact of the event and the personality goes way beyond what one would expect. Should this not be taken into account, and does it not appear that it is not taken into account in the voluntary code?

Mr. Griffiths : I endorse that point, which follows on from the one that I have been making. There are volumes of evidence to substantiate what my hon. Friend has said, and I hope to give the House some examples. The Evening Standard of 20 May this year published an excellent critique of advertising and the ways in which the tobacco industry had dodged bans on advertising. Anyone who has not read Mr. Eric Clark's excellent article charting how classic adverts, in the past and in the present, have succeeded in linking the cigarette with sophistication, should read it.

As he so rightly says, despite all the increasingly tougher codes, much of what is happening in advertising now does not contravene codes, yet tobacco companies get the message across in the same way. Marlboro, for instance, does not have to show or even mention somebody smoking cigarettes--it just has to show a cowboy. That is an example of what my hon. Friend has in mind.

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